


A grace that comes by violence

by hopelessbookgeek



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Discussions of death and suicide, Eventual Smut, F/M, More tags might be added depending, Post Season 15, Somewhat shaky AI Theory, York lives au, canon typical language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-02-03 12:28:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12748329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopelessbookgeek/pseuds/hopelessbookgeek
Summary: On that little mission with Tex, York was wounded but survived, and several years later he receives a Recovery beacon– Agent Washington is near death. Naturally, York has to find him. He finds a lot more than that, but how is Carolina supposed to deal with this? How are any of them?





	1. Incoming Recovery Beacon

_“This is not the most productive use of your abilities.”_

“You’re tellin’ me, D,” York said with a sigh, not looking away from his task. Why did a grocery store manager’s office have an encrypted lock? “But I gotta eat. Gotta provide for my family.”

_“You have no family.”_

He paused, then shook his head and went back to work. “Thanks for the reminder.”

_“I am the closest to a family you have.”_

“And you’re an absolute delight, Delta. Can you give me some ambient tunes for the job, at least? Or a drum roll?”

_“I would prefer not to.”_

“Alright, alright. Then quiet down and let me work.”

He didn’t take everything he found, just a few hundred out of the safe. It would cover the rest of his rent for the month and he could eat something besides the tasteless, colorless rations that were all he could afford before. Hm, maybe he’d come back to this store for his groceries, pay back a little of what he’d stolen. Then it was just borrowing, wasn’t it? If he paid them back?

It was important that he didn’t take everything he found. It _was_ , because then he was better than the common thieves, the cutpurses and scammers and thugs-for-hire. He didn’t hurt anyone, he didn’t steal from anyone who really needed it, and he didn’t ever take everything he found. He’d long since given up the opportunity to be a great man, but he tried as hard as he could to be a good one.

***

It was 1,976 days spent running, and Delta kept track because York couldn’t bear to. It was 1,976 days of hoping and wanting and trying, 1,976 nights where regret was a lot easier than sleep. It was 1,976 days since _she_ kicked him up into an empty elevator shaft. He’d taken the lighter, because it was the only thing he’d had left to remember her by. He lost it on that little jaunt with Tex. He never used it as a light, but things seemed darker since he lost it anyway.

_“You are lonely,”_ said Delta that night, as York picked apart a pomegranate. He always treated himself to a pomegranate after a successful break-in. It was such a time-consuming, messy, annoying fruit, so it became his little special occasion snack. Probably it wouldn’t be so messy if he wasn’t trying to pry the seeds out with the tip of a knife. Ah well.

“Thanks for the update,” he said, eye on the bowl of seeds.

_“It would increase your morale by up to thirty-eight percent if you were to find a partner, and up to seventy-six percent for a longer-term commitment.”_

“No.”

_“Is it not worth considering? Are you not confident in your ability?”_

“That’s not it, D. I don’t do one-night stands. There’s no…” He struggled with the word, and with the fruit. “No love in it.”

_“It is my understanding that deeper feelings are not required for sexual intercourse.”_

“Update your understanding, then.”

_“Human beings are social creatures, and the desire for physicality in any form is instinctual.”_

“Alright, well, when you become a real boy and you can hold my hand, then we’ll talk.”

Delta paused. In the years they’d been together, Delta had gradually developed more human speaking patterns, and that included the impression that he was thinking over his words. _“I find that possibility particularly unlikely.”_

York sighed, wiped his sticky hands on his pants. “Just… drop it, D. Look, I’ll even give you a _logical_ answer: I am not in the right state of mind to try making friends and would only alienate them. If ever I’m feeling better, I’ll keep your advice in mind. Until then, though, I don’t need a wingman.”

_“I am only trying to help.”_

“Delta! Command: stop bugging me about my social life.”

_“Executing.”_ He said nothing while York returned to his fruit and did nothing in the long minutes of silence broken only by the crunch of the seeds. But eventually– _“There are videos in my archives of your teammates–”_

“No! God, no, I don’t ever want to look at those.” He didn’t even know what they were, they could be journal entries where North interrupted or South destroying Wash’s sandcastle on shore leave or Carolina in his favorite pair of black heels. Maybe someday he’d want to find out, but he read the files Tex had showed him and he knew– he knew about– after everything the Director did in Allison’s name, he couldn’t–

“Power down, D. I’m going to finish this and go to bed.” He didn’t really think he’d fall asleep, but it was worth a shot. He didn’t need a mirror to know that he had hollows in his cheeks and bruises under his eyes, and they weren’t going to get noticeably better or worse if he got two hours of sleep or twelve. And if he didn’t sleep, then he didn’t dream.

But Delta didn’t shut down, he stayed present, his familiar light pulsing rhythmically like an idling car. “Delta?”

_“Incoming Recovery beacon.”_

Recovery. Recovery beacons were for dead and dying Freelancers, and he’d heard about a few of them secondhand years back when that… that _thing_ that used to be Maine was going around picking up AI. Thank God York had disabled his tracker, or he’d probably have gotten butchered too. But that was years ago and Maine was dead now, and anyway why would Delta alert him to the loss of another lower-tier Freelancer he’d never met, Massachusetts or Rhode Island or West Virginia?

“Got a name attached?”

_“The beacon indicates–”_

“I know what it indicates, but who is it?”

_“The signal belongs to Agent Washington.”_

That knocked the wind out of him so surely he dropped his knife, and it almost stabbed him in the leg but who could possibly care about that when he had news of _Wash_ , Wash who he thought had died long ago, maybe even right away after Epsilon–

“Wash is alive?” he asked faintly.

_“For the moment, though the beacon–”_

“Right– no, right, the beacon.” Dead or dying. Dying, but not yet dead. He couldn’t decide if hearing about him dying was worse than dead. “Can you– Delta, can you track the signal? He can’t be too far away if you picked up on the beacon…”

_“Executing.”_ He went quiet and York waited anxiously, palms sweaty and heart racing and what little food he’d taken in threatened to rise in his throat… _“Signal located.”_

“Signal located.” Oh, God, Wash wasn’t far away, and he was dying and maybe almost dead and he– he had to– after everything he’d failed to do before, he had to– “Can you get me there? How long?”

_“Including the time it takes to find transportation and barring delay, I estimate six days.”_

“Six days!” Six days was a lifetime, and six days was nothing compared to 1,976 but the kind of slow dying he’d been doing in five years was nothing like this. He reached for his armor, and he’d meant to clean the sand out of the joints tonight but no time now. “Alright. Okay. Six days. We’re going, D, we’re going. We’re going to find Wash.”


	2. At The End of the Universe

Chorus was an ugly planet on the outer rim of the galaxy, just like a million others that York would never visit. If he had his way he wouldn’t have visited this one; it was rocky and desolate, looked like the aftermath of nuclear war, and the one real city was the kind of dirty-chrome that would-be utopias always descended into.

Delta tracked the signal as far as the city center and couldn’t be more specific than that, but York saw a massive building that could only be a hospital. Probably he needed to visit one himself; he hadn’t had any maintenance done on his AI port since he’d defected, beyond the basics that Delta could coach him on, and after monthly physicals in Freelancer, four years with nothing… God only knew what else was wrong with him.

But he didn’t ask where he could check in, he shouldered his gun and asked the receptionist if she knew where Wash was. “He might be under David,” York said, gripping the edge of the desk with nervous strength. “Or Washington. Black armor, yellow trim–”

“Washington, here it is. Brought in a few days ago, due to be released… this afternoon. Room 57.”

“Thank you,” he said, and bolted. The elevator took an hour to arrive, it felt like, and his heartbeat was a butterfly’s erratic rhythm against his ribs. He’d still be there, right? He was alive, he was due to be released. Delta had tracked the signal here. He was here. He had to be here. He had to still be here.

Room 57’s door was locked, but when he turned away in despair he saw her.

She was at the other end of the hall talking to a medic in white-and-purple. Her armor was just the same, clean and polished and just that same color, greenish-blue-seafoam-green-turquoise-whatever it is. He’d practiced a speech he wanted to give her if they ever met again, after he couldn’t think of a pickup line that she would find acceptable, and there was so much he wanted to tell her… But he couldn’t say anything, couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, didn’t run down the hallway and fall to his knees to beg for forgiveness. Probably that would be classless, and he would only embarrass her.

Delta had told him a hundred times, a thousand, that Carolina had probably not survived the fall from that mountain ledge. That statistics were wholly and firmly against him. But York was lucky, had always been lucky, _I’d rather be lucky than good_ , and he knew–

There was no reason he should _know_ that Carolina was alive, not in the way he knew the taste of pomegranate, not in the way he knew his mother’s voice, and maybe it was his pathetic romantic’s heart but he knew– he knew that she– he just _knew_.

She was inclined to gesturing with her head when she talked and so her head tilted towards him, and he had no way of knowing if her eyes turned with her or if they stayed focused on the medic but he felt a jolt deep in his chest anyway like he’d just heard a door suddenly slam behind him. And then she froze completely, frozen like he was, and Delta whispered to him like he was back on the battlefield: _spotted._

Still he stood still as she marched towards him, purpose in every gesture, and when she stopped dead two feet ahead of him it felt like a mirror of the last time, except he was saying _hello_ instead of _goodbye_ and she didn’t have her gun. Probably for the best. “Where did you get that armor?” she demanded in a low voice, raw with emotion, and confusion struck him dumb.

“That’s Freelancer armor,” she continued, “and the color–” She paused and he knew she would have bitten back something too hard to say aloud. “Disrespectful at best. You’re a scavenger in dead man’s armor.”

How could she not know him? He would know her if her armor was orange or black or green, he would know her if he was too far away to trace the distinctive visor on her helmet, he would know her if getting here had taken thirty years and she was old and grey. He would know her at the end of the universe.

And it rang in his head, a clanging peal of _dead man’s armor dead man’s armor dead man’s armor_ , and yes that’s precisely how he’d felt for years now, that he was a dead man walking, but he knew she was alive, he knew it, he knew it, how could she not know it too? How could she not recognize his height, the way he carried himself? How could she _not know?_

“It isn’t dead man’s armor,” he said finally, and his tongue felt thick and he was unsteadily present and it had been a long time since he’d spoken to anyone who mattered, anyone except Delta. Talking to Delta was more like talking to himself than anything else. “Carolina?”

She used to make fun of the way he said her name, a little bit; she said it was funny that he stressed every syllable equally, piecemeal: _Ca-ro-li-na_. He tried to make a joke of it, tried not to be self-conscious, and she called it sweet instead, familiar.

“York,” she said, half a question, and he pulled off his helmet. He knew he didn’t look exactly the same– he ate badly and slept worse, he was newly scarred and even newer bruised, but he fixed her with a level asymmetrical stare. He was half a head taller than her but still it always felt like _she_ was looking down at _him_. “You’re alive.”

“I guess,” he said.

“But… how? The Meta–”

“I turned my tracker off. Still got my cargo.” He tapped the back of his neck and Delta appeared glittering at his shoulder.

_“Hello, Agent Carolina. I am surprised to see you again.”_

“Hopefully happy too,” she said distantly.

_“Of course. It is always a relief to know that teammates have escaped danger.”_

“You didn’t tell me,” she said to York. “You let me think you were dead. Everyone else– North, South, Wyoming, everyone–”

“I know about Wyoming,” he said, and tried not to sound too bitter. Wyoming had shot him last time they’d met, nearly killed him. If he was dead, York didn’t consider it too great a loss. He knew about the twins and that one broke his heart; South had been a partner in crime, once, and North his best friend.

“The Meta–”

“I know about that too.” Ugly business and miserable besides. Poor Maine. Thank God Delta had better sense than Sigma did.

“We thought you were _dead!”_ Her voice started to raise; Carolina had never been great at hiding her feelings, not when it was important to her. “Wash, the Director, you were officially designated KIA! You didn’t come and find me! You didn’t look for me–”

“I did look for you! Carolina, I _did_ , but Delta said there was no way you could have survived the fall and I had _no_ leads, no money, I had _nothing_ , no way to–”

“I can’t,” she interrupted. “Not now, I can’t– I can’t do this. I need to go.” And for the second time in his life Carolina left him behind.

And for the second time in his life he let her.


	3. The Best of Us

Carolina did everything with purpose. Every step, every punch, every movement, every flicker of her eyes or swish of her hair was done with complete and absolute _purpose_. York had never seen her stumble; even her mistakes seemed intentional. So it was hard to watch her walk away and know that she… well, that she _meant_ it.

He rubbed the back of his neck, his armor-clad fingertips brushing his AI port for the same sort of comfort that would come from someone squeezing his hand. Delta hummed deep in his mind, a cat-like purring that soothed the muscles he didn’t even realize he was clenching. “I don’t know how that could have gone worse,” he said faintly, to no one.

_She could have become violent_ , Delta suggested, and even when his figure disappeared York still answered aloud.

“At least she would have gotten the stress out.”

_Did you expect a warm reunion?_

“No,” he said, and dropped his eyes. “I guess I didn’t expect anything at all. All I did was hope.”

_That is unfortunate._

Something rattled and then the door to his right opened: room 57. A black boy in teal-ish armor looked out through the gap. “Did I hear yelling?”

“Yep,” York said with a sigh, and then– “Wait, that’s Wash’s room. Is Wash still there?”

“Yeah,” the guy said, squinting a little suspiciously, like he was trying to remember something. “Who wants to know?”

“An old friend– please, just let me see him.” He knew how pathetic he sounded, knew he must look wretched, but everything was too loud and bright and busy and just too damn _much_ after years of loneliness and he was shaking with the effort of not freaking out. He used to be even-tempered, laid-back, but more and more Delta was as much a therapy dog as a friend. He turned his thoughts inward. _What do I say to convince him?_

Delta, in response, flickered to life. “ _Hello. May I be of assistance?”_

The guy’s eyes widened and his mouth twitched. “You have an AI! But I thought they were all gone? Church is gone…”

Church. It had been a while since he’d heard that surname, and he would have thought that more than five years later he wouldn’t feel bile rise in his throat but he had to swallow it back anyway. But it would make a terrible impression to introduce himself by vomiting all over the floor, so he straightened his spine and set a casual smile on his face. “Well, D? You gonna introduce yourself?”

_“I am the artificial intelligence program designated ‘Delta’ by Project Freelancer.”_

“Freelancer,” the guy said, and it was thoughtful but the name sounded sour in his mouth anyway. “Alright… Wash? You got company.” He stepped aside and let York walk in.

Wash was sitting on the bed, out of armor, with a thick bandage around his throat. York had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from gasping aloud; he looked so much _older_ , what had happened to the rookie that did this to him? Was it all Epsilon? And if it wasn’t, God, what did he go through? Wash was younger than York, or at least he’d thought so, but he looked ten, fifteen years older, with his ash-blonde hair grey at the temples and a veritable maze of scars over his face and arms. He looked exhausted, as tired as York felt, with deep bruises under his eyes.

“ _David_ ,” York said without thinking. Wash’s eyes met his cautiously and he seemed uncomfortable to hear his given name. That was understandable. York had spent most of his time running going by any code name he felt like, but never his given name, and besides, Delta still called him York.

“Great,” Wash muttered. “Tucker, check my chart. What meds did they give me this morning?”

The guy, Tucker, passed York and frowned at the clipboard at the footboard of Wash’s bed. “Just painkillers, dude, and nothing too strong. Why?”

“Cause I’m hallucinating again.”

Tucker’s eyes flicked to York. “Depends. Do you see a guy in gold armor with one eye and a little green Church?”

Wash rubbed his eyes but still looked disbelieving when he reopened them. “How do you know what I’m hallucinating?”

“It’s not a hallucination, dude, unless they doped me up too. And last time I asked for that, Dr. Grey said no. Actually she said that I totally could _on one condition_ and I was way too scared to figure out what that meant. Probably looking for a certain kinda favor if you know what I’m saying.”

“I highly doubt that,” said Wash, and for half a second York saw the rookie he used to be under the rest of it, the almost-smile that reminded him of banter with North. “Okay, so I’m not on drugs, and probably not crazy.”

“Not crazier than usual, anyway.”

“In which case,” said Wash as if Tucker hadn’t spoken, “can you give us a minute alone?”

Tucker looked at the open door but hesitated. “Why?”

“Because an old friend just rose from the dead.” He threaded a hand through his hair in just the same way he used to and Tucker shot York one last warning glance before he left the room and closed the door behind him.

The air was static and heavy and the four feet between them might as well have been four galaxies. As if he was trying to give them privacy, Delta disappeared. “When was the last time you got a good night’s sleep?” York asked gently.

“We were at war. I was busy.” Wash had always been the heart of their little team, naïve and trusting and nervous and soft. Maybe it was the collapse of the Project, maybe it was the war, maybe Epsilon and maybe something else entirely, but it broke York’s heart a little to see him clipped and cold and hard. “And so were you, apparently.”

“I was designated KIA, I guess… You’ve been telling people I’m dead.”

Wash’s eyes were dead grey. “I had no way of knowing you were alive. I know what happened to everyone else, what happened to Maine and Tex and North–”

“What happened to Tex?” He’d liked Tex, trusted her. She’d given him the world, even if he didn’t like his place in it all that much.

“Same thing that happened to the rest of them. I was Recovery team, York, I was _there_ , I _saw_ them…”

York nodded slowly, sank into the chair beside the bed, set his helmet on the floor. He knew about North but that didn’t mean it didn’t break his heart, and it had been a long time since he’d really cried but the night he found out about North was the closest he’d come in years. Would there come a time when remembering his friends didn’t feel like shrapnel grinding into his ribs? Would he ever stop wondering about could-have-beens? “Did North… go easy?”

“No,” said Wash, but not unkindly. York appreciated the honesty. “South set him up and the Meta did the rest. Ripped Theta right out of his skull.” Poor Theta. North had been a good father figure. York felt a throb in the base of his brain and he knew that was Delta’s way of expressing grief. Theta was his brother, after all.

“To be honest,” Wash continued, “every time Command pinged me with another beacon, I was sure it was going to be you. I was so steeled up to believe that you’d be the next body I had to bury.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“No, I…” He sighed. “I’m glad you’re alive. I really am. I’m just so… so tired. Did you ever look for us? After?”

“Yes,” York said immediately. “Anyone, anyone. I would have absolutely wept at the feet of Louisiana, Nebraska, Hawaii, anyone. But it’s not… the galaxy is huge, and I’m not… I thought about you,” he said, like that was the same thing, like that was a consolation prize. “Every day. Delta picked up your Recovery beacon and I came as quick as I could… what happened?”

“Shot through the throat. You know how it goes.” Maine had lost his ability to speak at all after his injury, but then, those had been nine bullets. Wash did sound a little hoarse, come to think of it. York hoped it would pass. “I’m alive. Good enough for now, I suppose. You saw Carolina?”

“Yes. Saw _and_ heard. Has she…” He hesitated, not exactly sure what to ask, what he wanted to know. He didn’t intend to share the intimate details of his years of struggling and grieving, and he wouldn’t expect Carolina to either. Her pain could be her own; he respected that. “Has she been okay? Relatively speaking?” _And would you know if she wasn’t?_

Wash looked at him like he knew exactly what York had wanted to ask. “Have _you_ found anyone outside of the Project who really understands what it was like?”

“No,” he said, as though he’d told anyone about the Project anyway.

“Exactly. I’m the only person she has left in the universe who _knows_. She’s doing alright. No worse than the rest of us, but not better, either.” He sighed again, like it was exhausting him to be short and sharp. “We’re both insomniacs these days. Whenever we’re awake at the same time we go out and take a walk.”

York wondered if they went out in armor or not. Did they wear their guns over their shoulders or tucked into their elbows, or did they not wear them at all? Did onlookers see a tall black-armored figure beside a teal one, or did they see six feet of exhausted muscle beside a redhead with eyes like nuclear fallout?

“What do you do on your walks?”

“We talk, sometimes. I’ll tell her how none of the recruits I’ve worked with could do a fraction of the workouts we used to, and she’ll laugh. She’ll tell me that she punched a would-be mugger through a wall and I’ll congratulate her. I’ll say, _hey, Carolina, remember when North drank too much at Florida’s New Year’s party and kissed me at midnight?_ And she’ll say _hey, Wash, remember when I was so tired I fell asleep standing up in my armor?_ I’ll tell her about how I can’t sleep because I’m having nightmares about dying out in the middle of nowhere like South did, with no one left to miss me. She’ll tell me that she’s afraid of having to say goodbye all over again. Sometimes we don’t say anything at all, and she’ll take my hand and we’ll stare at the moon together.” He swallowed, and York knew that when Wash talked about being the only person Carolina had left, he meant the reverse too.

God he wished he knew what to say to that. He felt sick and couldn’t even say why. Relief from the churning anxious nausea that had been a part of his life so completely in the past week? Sympathy for insomnia, depression, fear, nightmares? Was it even petty jealousy that he wasn’t the one who could listen to Carolina’s memories, the one to hold her hand? Maybe it wasn’t psychological at all and malnutrition was catching up with him.

“Why did you leave me behind?” Wash asked, so quietly that Delta picked it up before York did.

“Why were you doing Recovery?” York answered. As far as he could tell, Wash was the only agent he was friendly with who’d stuck by the Project. He didn’t let himself consider Carolina.

“I didn’t have a choice! You and Tex and the others were long gone by the time I’d recovered from Epsilon! You could have come back for me, North could have come back for me, but you _didn’t_ , you left me behind and I was forced to pretend I didn’t know all the awful things the Director did– what do you think Epsilon did to me, York? Epsilon was _memory_ , I knew very intimately what had gone on behind closed doors, so instead I was stuck cleaning up the bodies of the friends who didn’t trust me enough to take me with them.”

York didn’t have it in him to fight with one of the only friends he had left. “You’re right,” he said instead, and Wash’s eyebrows jumped up. Whatever he thought York was going to say, it clearly wasn’t that. “You’re right, Wash. It didn’t occur to me to take you with me. I didn’t know what was going to happen to _anyone_ , I was busy trying to not die and then I had to fight Carolina… But I should have, I should have tried to get all my friends out safe. Even not knowing about Epsilon, I should have trusted you would listen to me.”

“I would have,” he said softly. “I would have followed you anywhere.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Wash, I can’t imagine how alone you must have felt…”

“You were alone too, if you didn’t even know what happened to Tex.”

“I had Delta,” he said, like that really counted. Delta made an annoyed sound in his head. “You had… memories.”

Wash shrugged, ruffled up his hair again. “I’m rebuilding. Making the best of it. But… thanks. Means a lot.”

On impulse York stood up and went to Wash, pulling him into a tight embrace. It took Wash a minute to respond, but he did hug back. “Love you, buddy,” York mumbled. “No matter what happens, I don’t want you to die thinking I didn’t care what happened to you.”

“...You too,” said Wash. “Good to have you back, I guess.” Ooh, that stung, but York couldn’t really blame him, and he pulled away first to give Wash the space. “I’ll have to introduce you to my sim troopers. That was one of them, Tucker. He’s good, like we used to be. I expect you’ll be impressed at what a good job I did training them up.”

For a moment York was confused at the sudden ego, but there was the faintest laughter deep in Wash’s throat and so he smiled a little in response. “It’ll be an honor. I should probably talk to a medic myself first but anyone you trained is gonna be in good shape.”

Wash snorted and York grabbed his helmet with almost a grin. “Not so bad for the squad’s second-worst fighter, huh?”

_I was being nice. You’re easily the worst_. He’d forgotten that. He had a tendency to run his mouth when he was stressed, and he’d always had such a back-and-forth with Wash that he took it too far sometimes. “I wish I hadn’t said that. Tex was the best, and looked what happened to her. Carolina was the best, and look what that did to her. Being one of the best didn’t save me. You always had such a big heart, Wash. In all the ways that count, you were the best of us.”

He didn’t wait for Wash’s response, just put his helmet back on and left to find a medic.


	4. Thirty-Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As y'all can probably tell, this update schedule is completely random and determined only by how many ideas I had at any given time. So. Y'know. Have fun.

There was no shortage of medics out here, that was for sure. For the past few years York had been unable to find a competent medic and didn’t have the money to pay one anyway. He still didn’t have the money. After rent and transportation, that last break-in left him with little more than the price of the pomegranate he’d eaten.

But he didn’t hate himself enough to not take advantage of an opportunity like this, so he stopped an assistant and asked for Wash’s doctor. “I want to say… Dr. Grey.”

The PA cocked her head. “You… _want_ to see Dr. Grey?”

“If she’s qualified, yes. Both of us need to be looked at.”

She looked down at her data pad. “You and Washington?”

“ _York and I,_ ” said Delta, and the PA led him to an exam room and asked him to wait, gave him paperwork to fill out and left. He glanced over the questions.

“What would I even put down on this? Do I have an address, D?”

“ _In theory, but your building has no street numbers visible, so it would have to be a ballpark guess anyway.”_

“And my age. I don’t even know how old I am. How about that.” He frowned down at the paper. Delta informed him when it was the anniversary of his implantation and they celebrated that instead, never with a cake or a song but sometimes with a sweet roll and a long meditative silence.

“ _If the birth date I have for you on file is correct, you are thirty-five.”_

“Thirty-five. How distinguished. What d’you think, D? Am I gonna be a silver fox?”

Delta was thoughtfully silent and that made York smile. “ _Your features are very symmetrical,”_ he said eventually.

“You’re a real sweet-talker, D.” He tossed the paperwork aside. No allergies, no medication, and his only preexisting conditions were clearly visible on his left cheek and the back of his neck. The less paperwork the better. “How likely is it that I’m in bad shape?”

“ _Your armor is running at fifty-three percent capacity, and your healing unit is sporadically functional. I have not detected any serious injuries, but I am not a psychiatrist.”_

“And I’m taking that comment to mean you think I need one of those.”

“ _It couldn’t hurt. But your true concern is our port.”_

Our. Our port. Sometimes York didn’t know how to categorize Delta: friend, confidante, equipment, liability. In recent years that pulsing green light was as familiar and welcome as sunrise, and the way Delta settled so comfortably into the hollows of his heart was the most intimate thing he’d ever experienced. When Delta powered down for the night, it felt like trading armor for a hot bath and pajamas, and while an AI had no heartbeat or breath, York still felt their mixed biology in sync. All the pretty language made them sound half lovers, but in truth Delta was as natural an extension of his anatomy as his arm.

“Just wanna make sure you’re doing alright, buddy. You’re the only family I got left, remember?”

 ***

Dr. Grey swept into the room like a hurricane and York was immediately set on edge. Her armor was so white, pristine; in his mind armor, like the person who wore it, should be scuffed and scratched a little. Scars were the evidence of a life well-lived.

“Oh, _hello_ ,” she trilled, and he physically had to restrain himself from recoiling. “Dr. Emily Grey at your service! I’m always delighted to meet a friend of Washington’s! I do love working with Freelancers, you always have such stories to tell. Not to mention some very interesting injuries!”

His throat felt dry and he had to clear it. “Hi,” he managed. “Need a full physical.”

“Absolutely! Strip.”

Well, it wasn’t the first time he’d heard that, although admittedly never in quite that tone. He stacked his armor haphazardly on a chair in the corner and rolled his shoulders to get the stiffness out; sleeping in armor for a week would do that to a man. He could _feel_ Dr. Grey staring him down, the lines of his back and the muscles in his thighs and, when he half-turned toward her, the eye.

In that he was glad the doctor kept her helmet on. He did not much look forward to _that look_ , the surprise melting into either pity or disgust when people saw his eye. In the Project he’d never cared, no one had looked twice and he was just as good as he’d been before, but after… call it vanity.

 _It isn’t vanity_ , Delta told him, _to crave attraction._

“Goodness,” said Dr. Grey. “Aren’t you quite the patchwork! What happened here?” She touched a knot of scar tissue on that damn left side, just above his heart. It was the first time another person had touched his bare skin in years and he had to fight the claustrophobic urge to jerk back.

“Old friend decided to break my heart in the most literal possible way.” Bastard. Losing Gamma had done Wyoming some nasty damage, or maybe those ugly impulses were always there and that’s why they were paired in the first place.

“And your eye?”

“Grenade shattered my visor. Same friend, several years apart.”

She cocked her head and peered closer. “Very thick cataract! Can you see out of it?

 _I’m the reason you still have one good eye_. “No,” he said. “Not a bit.”

“Has that changed over time? Vision gotten worse, change in appearance?”

“No. Lost vision the second that grenade blew up. Guess I can’t say if it’s changed in appearance, haven’t looked in a mirror in a couple years.”

“Well, silly, we can change that!” She rummaged in a cabinet for a moment and came up with a hand mirror. He sat on the exam table, took a breath, then a second, and looked. He and Delta sighed together.

He hardly recognized himself. That was his hair, his skin tone, his week of stubble and his bad eye, but since when did his good eye look so sunken and bruised? He’d lost weight and it gave his bone structure the fine look that North had had naturally, glacial cheekbones and a jaw you could crack ice on. But that had suited North, cool as a Russian winter; York had always been softer, warmer, spun gold and cinnamon.

 _Are you disappointed to look older?_ Delta asked in his blunt way.

 _No,_ York told him. _Only that I don’t recognize this face. If, say, North was like me, just MIA, if he showed up tomorrow, would he still recognize me?_

_The human body regenerates all its cells every seven years. One day you will wear a face that North never knew._

“Poetic,” he muttered aloud, and set the mirror aside. “No,” he said to Dr. Grey. “No change in appearance.”

“Interesting! Well, let’s get the rest of you looked at.” He sat very patiently while she poked and prodded, took blood, listened to his heart, shone lights in his eyes until he squinted. They sat for a few minutes in silence while she ran the blood work and he awkwardly tried to cover himself.

Finally she looked up from her scanner. “Fantastic news! You have no STIs!”

He choked and Delta made an awful mechanical laugh somewhere in the back of his mind. “Great,” he said hoarsely. “Just what I was hoping.”

“Your hormone panel is normal, heart and lungs sound fine. Perfectly healthy thirty-seven year old!”

“Thirty-five,” he corrected.

“Oh, my scanners don’t lie! You’re thirty-seven if you’re a day!”

He shook his head but let it go. Either her equipment was faulty or he’d given Delta the wrong birth year, and it wasn’t worth a fight. “And my AI port?”

“Oh, very bad shape. You’ll definitely have to get maintenance done if you ever want to fill it again!”

Delta stirred in his mind, questioning. “What d’you mean, fill it? It is filled. I have an AI. D?”

He appeared in his usual flickering green. “ _Hello, doctor. Is my hardware damaged?”_

“Oh!” She pulled off her helmet to stare with wide eyes. Her hair was arranged in an intricate plait and even though she’d been wearing a helmet and had presumably been working, not a hair was out of place. That was strangely unsettling. “A fragment! I was _so_ curious. Would you allow me to run some tests? Pull it?”

“ _No,_ ” said York and Delta together.

“That is,” said York, “he and I are a package deal. Delta doesn’t go anywhere without me.”

“How long have you had it?”

“I’ve had _him,_ ” he stressed, “for… six years? Give or take?” And it had been years since he’d pulled him, four years or five, he would’ve gone crazy long ago without Delta to talk to him, argue and lecture, keep track of the days and warn him away from danger.

“Fascinating! More than half a decade! Generally fragments have a shorter half-life than that, I would love to study the degeneration-”

York felt sick to his stomach and set a scowl on his face as he got up and started dressing. “I don’t think so,” he said, as sharp as shattered glass. As sharp as Wash. “We’ve spent enough time as lab rats. Delta isn’t degenerating. Thanks for the clean bill of health.”

“Well, alright, if you insist! I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around as it is, I’m not letting Washington leave Armonia for a while!” Her laugh was like the tittering of some strange bird and it made the hairs rise on the back of his neck. “I’ll make sure this enters your medical record.”

“No record,” he said immediately. The thought of a paper trail with such intimate information made him sick. “You said I’m healthy anyway, let’s leave it there.”

“Your AI port–”

“Is my business, and Delta’s. That’s not information I want just anyone hearing. Alright? Keep it quiet.” Didn’t he used to have charisma? He used to be so good at talking to people. Conversation now felt like trying to take a deep breath after the wind’s been knocked out of him: painful, strained, and unnatural.

But that couldn’t be an excuse, not when there were things he needed. He had no currency of any kind to buy loyalty or information or friendship, so he needed to barter and he needed to try, try. Hadn’t he lost enough already? Was he going to let the Director take it all from him again? He took that deep breath, softened his eyes, and let Delta pulse reassuringly deep inside. “Thank you for all your help,” he said. “Do you know where I might find Carolina?”


	5. You'll Get Used to Them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year's!

But no one did know where to find Carolina, because she was as wild and unpredictable as the flames she resembled, and although in usual circumstances she kept a schedule strict as any prison guard’s, when she was upset… Even now York liked that in her. Carolina, to the last, defied categorization or quantification.

And there was no use in wandering this ugly, mysterious city all on his own. Delta had no maps and the thought of approaching more strangers to ask for directions… no, he couldn’t do that. So instead of pressing forward into the great unknown, he turned back towards room 57 and found Wash in armor ready to check out.

“Clean bill of health?” Wash asked, and the helmet distorted his voice, made the hoarseness more pronounced.

“Clean enough,” he said, and begged Delta to keep the port’s degeneration between the two of them. “STI free, at least.”

“The answer to a question I never asked.”

“So where are you headed now that you’re, y’know… alive?”

“ _Alive_ is such an optimistic term for it.”

“Oh, don’t I know it.” Two weeks ago it would have broken his heart to hear someone like Wash say that, to joke about death as if it was of no consequence, to add to the long list of things he’d lost. But now, in person… well, he could relate, and it was so nice to talk to someone who _got it_ in a way no one else really could. _Dead man’s armor._

“But,” Wash continued, and started towards the elevators, “I’m going to get something to eat outside this damn hospital, and I’ll introduce you to my quote-unquote friends. Do you have somewhere to stay yet?”

“No. I came straight here when I heard and spent all my money getting here.”

“All your money? Jesus, York, how far did you have to come?”

It wasn’t that, but he hadn’t taken everything he’d found and after rent and transportation… rent for a house he was probably not going back to. “Not terribly far. Journey probably cost me… sixty credits?”

“ _Sixty credits?”_ Wash jabbed the elevator’s down button as if pressing it harder would make it come faster. “Good God, York, don’t you have a _job?”_

“Not much call for a former infiltration specialist these days,” said York, and swallowed back bile when Delta remembered saying that to Tex so long ago. _Same thing that happened to the rest of them._ “And my other talents, while numerous, don’t exactly translate to a cash windfall.”

“You topped the leaderboard. That’s a skill.”

“I could be a mercenary,” he said, and hated the feel of the word on his tongue, the hiss-and-snarl of the syllables. “And I don’t do that anymore. I’m not a soldier. I’m _not._ ”

“Okay, okay,” said Wash, and hit the button another four times until the door opened with a ding. They stepped inside beside two PAs and a nervous-looking woman out of armor. “I want to warn you about my friends before you meet them.”

“Okay… Why?”

“They can be a little… much. One of them has a robot, but it’s harmless. Two of them will be arguing nonstop. One of them has pink armor but don’t call it pink. And don’t call me David in front of them.”

“Wh… why?”

Wash shrugged. “They don’t know my name. In a perfect world they won’t ever know. They’ve never asked but the last thing I need is to give them more ammunition to make fun of me.”

He had to mull that over, the idea that he could be around people he liked that didn’t know such a basic fact about him. Carolina knew his name, Wash knew his name, even if neither one of them ever used it. Part of it was the pervasive sense that the man he’d been, the boy his mother had named, had long since died and been replaced by New York state. Part was that he preferred the way _York_ sounded, a sharp joyful shout of a name.

Delta pulsed low in his brainstem and he wondered what it would be like to have acquaintances. For so long Delta had been his only friend and Delta was part and parcel with his consciousness. There was nothing about him that Delta didn’t know; there was nothing about him that wasn’t also Delta, and vice versa. Each other’s shadow, in a sense.

But all of that felt too _big_ to say aloud, and anyway if nothing else it meant he understood the concept that there were things too intimate to share with even close friends, so he didn’t press on that point. “Your friends make fun of you?”

“Yes,” he said with a long-suffering sigh. “Yes. Painfully so.”

_Yeah, you should test that, Wash! You usually are. Haha, and you believed that?_

Guess York shouldn’t be surprised that Wash would find more people who talked to him the way he had.

 ***

The restaurant was one of those places with the conveyer belt you had to grab plates from. It was mostly empty when they walked in, but for a couple with milkshakes at one table and six people crammed into a four-person booth in the corner, with what looked like eighteen plates of sushi in front of them. York hoped they were going to sit with the couple. York was wrong.

A soldier in dark blue stood up too quick and rattled the booth, prompting complaints from the rest of the table. “ _Agent Washington!”_ he shouted, and everyone else at the table and the restaurant turned to look. York was thankful no one could see his face, but he shrunk back a little anyway. Once he’d liked turning heads, being the center of attention, but that was a long time ago.

Wash led him to the booth and pulled up a couple extra chairs and York was stuck at the head of the table, being able to see everyone at once. Wash pulled his helmet off, almost smiled, and stole a plate of sushi to pick at while he introduced everyone. That was Tucker in the corner, and the dark blue excitable soldier beside him was Caboose. Next to Caboose in not-pink armor was Donut, who waved happily. Across from them in regulation red was Sarge– just Sarge, no name, York could actually kind of relate to that– and the inseparable Grif and Simmons in orange and maroon. Grif’s brown face was mottled with swathes of pale freckled skin, while in the same spots Simmons had metal. York was really, really not going to ask.

“And this is York,” Wash said at the end of the introductions. “He’s an old friend.”

“A Freelancer, you mean,” Simmons said, almost accusingly.

“I am sick and tired of meeting Freelancers,” said Grif, looking back to his plate.

“Oh, Grif,” said Donut, in a voice much higher than York would have guessed given Wash’s quick rundown on them on the way over: Donut had been shot and exploded and survived. “You haven’t even met him yet! Nice to meet you, York!”

“Thanks,” he said, and took his helmet off. Given Grif and Simmons’ faces, given Donut’s burn scars, his eye was going to be far from the worst injury at the table. “Nice to meet Wash’s friends.”

“Friends!” boomed Sarge, stern-faced. “I’m his commanding officer!”

“You’re really not,” said Wash.

“Agent isn’t a rank,” Tucker supplied, eyeing York a little warily.

“Which means,” said Sarge, “that I do rank above him, since I have a rank!”

“That’s not what that means,” Wash said, already looking tired, but smiling nonetheless.

“So tell me,” said Sarge, “are you better than Washington?”

“I…” He had been, once, but he hadn’t fought anyone in years while Wash was fighting a war.

“Let me tell you about York,” Wash said, and York almost recognized the way his eyes lit up when he spoke. “York used to date _Carolina_.”

“Badass,” Tucker agreed. “Used to? She dumped your ass, right?”

“We both separately faked our own deaths,” said York. “Take that how you will.”

“That’s very strange,” said Caboose, and York had to incline his head in unspoken agreement.

“Speaking of girls we used to smash,” Tucker said, and Wash groaned. “Grif, where’s your sister?”

“Die,” Grif said.

“She’s with Junior,” said Simmons. “She called it babysitting, but she had that look on her face.”

Tucker winced, but laughed too. “Just like his old man, I guess!”

“How–” Tucker looked _young,_ how did he have a kid old enough to flirt? Or… more than flirt? “How old is your son?”

“Oh, he’s five,” said Tucker. “But he’s Sangheili.”

“Is he an adult?” asked Donut. “Is he finished growing?”

“He is, and he’d better be, he’s eight-foot-one.”

York must have had some kinda look on his face because Wash almost laughed and bumped his shoulder. “You’ll get used to them.”

_Will we?_ Delta asked York, and he had no answer.


	6. Undignified, Abandoned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, I’m just now realizing how many more plot threads I still want to introduce. Strap in, folks.

York mostly followed in silence as Wash and the sim troopers headed back to their communal apartments. Why a bunch of grown men would choose to live in cramped quarters together he had no idea. He half-heartedly raised the question to Donut as they hopped on the train but he got a long, rambling response about flammable lube and dinosaurs so he didn’t ask for clarification.

From what he could gather and with some well-reasoned leaps from Delta, they were sim troopers who got caught up in a mess of Freelancer business and hadn’t really left the Red-and-Blue identities behind. It was almost funny to see Wash, who he’d insistently called _rookie_ for almost a year after the met, hovering like a mother hen keeping careful eye on her brood. “We’re gonna have to get you up to date on all our gossip,” said Donut. Never had York met a grown man whose voice sounded so much like a bird’s chirp.

“I do have a few questions,” said York, watching the city whip by the train’s windows. “Why are there four Reds and two Blues?” He knew Wash was training them and Tucker in particular was good, but two to four was quite an imbalance.

“We started out with a captain and two recruits to each side,” said Simmons. “But their captain died, and then each side got a new recruit.”

“They didn’t send you a new captain?”

“We didn’t tell Command,” said Tucker, and he shrugged. “Paperwork. Besides, then I got to have Flowers’ armor.”

“ _Flowers?_ ” He’d only ever met one person with that name but there was no way–

“Florida,” Wash confirmed.

“Then we got Tex,” Tucker continued. “Which was terrifying, mostly because it meant I had to see Church get all pathetic over his ex-girlfriend.”

Church again. Wash would know the whole story so York promised himself he’d ask later and Delta set a reminder as well, the too-familiar surname putting him on edge. But wait– “What do you mean, ex-girlfriend? How was Tex supposed to–”

“I feel like we got someone else at the same time,” said Grif. “Anyone else remember?”

“Oh! Sheila!” said Caboose. York would’ve asked who Sheila was that could make a grown man so giddy to remember her, but Caboose just seemed to be… like that.

“No, not the tank…”

“The Warthog!” said Sarge.

“That’s not a person. Oh well, maybe not. Anyway, Blue Team is small because they keep killing each other.” _Same thing that happened to the rest of them._ “Caboose shot Church with a tank. Actually I think Donut killed Tex.”

“Only the first time,” he protested. “I’m not responsible for the other time. And they came right back so honestly I don’t see the problem!”

Oh, God, York’s head was pounding.

“When do you think things went to shit?” Simmons asked Tucker. “O’Malley or Wyoming?”

“What d’you mean, _went_ to shit? It was shit from the beginning! It was a fucking box canyon!”

Wyoming. God, York really needed a nap.

“We did pretty well for ourselves,” said Grif. “Thinking about it. Like, how many Freelancers did we take out? Florida, Wyoming, the fucking _Meta_ , Tex…”

“Wash killed South Dakota,” said Simmons, and helmet or not York turned to look at Wash with his heart in his miserable throat. _Never abandon your team._

“Carolina killed the Director,” Wash said quickly, like he could feel York staring at him.

“Y’know, I guess Blood Gulch wasn’t too bad,” said Tucker. “Grif’s sister–”

“One more word,” Grif threatened.

“I should hit that again.”

“I’m going to hit _you_.”

“I just need a good line to open with.” _So when I finally see her again_ – “I’m thinking, hey baby, want me to be the reason you get your next abortion?” _If I said I liked your armor_ – “Nah, too on the nose.” _She probably would have busted_ –

“I swear to God, Tucker–”

“What? Did you not think your sister was a whore?”

“I knew she was! I’m sick of hearing _you_ be one!”

They hit their stop and streamed out of the train car to what had to be the relief of every other passenger. Caboose pointed excitedly at a tall apartment building two blocks from the train station. “You can meet Freckles!” he told York. “He is having fun in the Red apartment right now but you will love him!”

“He’s _where?_ ” Simmons said. “Caboose!” He bolted towards the apartment and Caboose laughed, followed him at a run, chased by Sarge and Donut. Grif stopped at a convenience store for cigarettes and what he called a baker’s dozen of Zebra Cakes, and then it was just Tucker and Wash and York on the pretty residential street with an overhang of grey twilight sky.

“Why’d you kill South?” York asked quietly, walking slow.

“Do we have to talk about this now?”

“Yes!” He couldn’t explain why it was so important; Wash had said she set North up, sacrificed her own twin brother. But South has been so neglected and ill-treated by the end, and she, like CT before her, was the only one who recognized that what they were doing was bullshit. South was set up for failure in a way even Wash never had been and York felt a wild, cosmic sort of guilt.

He was tired of losing his friends, especially at each others’ hands.

“She shot me in the back. She set North up!”

“You were so angry that no one thought to make sure you were alright. Who was looking out for her?”

“The person she left for dead to save her own skin.”

It wasn’t like that– well it was, but– York had almost died when Wyoming’s bullet shattered his sternum, he’d come so damn close that sometimes he could hear Delta in the back of his head with a fatal prognosis. _York will not survive_. And if he’d died there it would have been so wildly unfair, a death so painfully unsuited to the life that came before. Wyoming got what he deserved and North died the martyr but South got the death that York would have: undignified, abandoned, and at the hands of someone who almost understood.

But there was no way to explain that to someone like Wash, who had been shattered and repaired and broken again until the pain that meant something and the pain that didn’t were indistinguishable. So York said nothing, especially because Delta sparked up hot and bright in his port, and an AI can’t feel _rage_ but there was a kinship destroyed that radiated down to his chest. _Brother, brother_ , he murmured to York.

That he almost understood. Regardless of the life he’d had before, Agent New York had no family; Delta’s brothers were his own.

“I just miss her,” he said finally in a low voice. He missed her wicked sharp glances and her loud laugh and the shitty whiskey she purposely left too easy to steal. And more to that he missed what she represented, the era of the Project where they weren’t all at cross-purposes, where things could be _want_ instead of _need_ and Carolina still knew how to smile. “What she was. What we were, and not what we became.”

“You can’t live like that,” said Tucker to his surprise. There was a different tone to his voice compared to his light and raunchy conversation on the train. “You can’t love someone for what they were instead of what they are.”

Maybe, but that implied that he’d grown into someone worth loving, or indeed someone at all, instead of an empty shell with an aging AI. But the files, he’d read the files, becoming too entrenched in memory is what started this mess in the first place.

“You can try,” he said, instead of any of that.

***

The apartment seemed nice, actually. Spacious, well-lit, with fresh paint and clean counters. It was even peaceful, given all the yelling from across the hall in the other quarters. But it didn’t surprise York that it was nice, really, Armonia seemed like a city with money. The surprise came from the woman on the couch wearing shorts, a bra, and nothing else.

“Jesus Christ,” Wash said, in that exhausted but not surprised tone that North had once perfected. “Kai. Put on a shirt.”

“Fuck off,” she said, not looking up from her phone. “You’re not my dad.”

“And I’m not your brother, either, so I’m not yelling. We have… company.”

York took off his helmet to at least be face to face, and she looked up quickly and then did a double take. She looked like the youngest of the group so far, with the same brown skin, flat nose, and heavy-lidded eyes as Grif. “This is York,” said Wash. “He’s an old friend. York, Grif’s sister Kai.”

He raised his hand in half a wave. “Damn,” she said. “I woulda thought you’d be older than Wash!”

“I am older than Wash.”

“You don’t look like it! You look good as hell, are you busy right now?”

“I’m, I’m…” Flattered? Tired? In love already? Not interested? Sorry?

“He’ll pass,” said Wash flatly. “York, take a shower and go to bed.”

“Is that an order?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, sir,” he said. It was nice to take a hot shower again, to wash his hair and shave his face and scrub under his nails until he looked like most of a human being again. It was nicer to lie down in a soft bed, Wash’s bed he learned later, and he fell asleep as soon as he hit the pillow.

He slept on and off for what Wash later told him was the better part of two days, waking sporadically to stuff food down his throat. Real food, and so much of it, made him feel sick, but he just slept it off.

And to his complete surprise he didn’t dream at all.

Finally he woke up and stayed awake. It was late morning and he was probably due for another shave and shower and definitely a change of clothes, but before he could do any of that Wash came in, leaned against the doorway with his arms folded. “Hey, Sleeping Average,” he said, and York nearly laughed. “Looking pretty scruffy again.”

“I’ll say.” He rubbed his chin. “Still can’t believe I’ve got less facial hair than you.”

“Did you just notice I have a beard?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

“It’s been a very busy few days,” he protested. “Leave me alone.”

“So I know you just woke up from a semi-coma,” said Wash, “but are you… up to seeing people? You’re being requested.”

“Yeah,” he said, sighing, imagining the whole wild retinue and maybe others besides. He had yet to meet Freckles and was afraid to. A figure joined Wash at the door but haloed by sunlight and with hazy eyes besides York couldn’t make them out. “Who wants to see me?”

“Me,” said Carolina.


	7. Run Diagnostics

York didn’t notice Wash leave, didn’t notice the door close behind him, just waited for his eye to adjust to the light and watched Carolina’s features become clearer like a mirage in reverse. The vivid red of her hair, apple red, blood red, wasn’t diminished in the slightest, although it was threaded with silver. There were frown lines in her forehead and smile lines at her eyes and a bracket of lines around her mouth, parentheses around five years’ worth of words he hadn’t been around to hear.

She caught him staring, naturally. “What do you think? Does retirement suit me?”

Oh, her voice out of armor was just the same, and he wanted to tell her that retirement suited her just as well as everything else, that the world had to adapt itself to Carolina instead of the other way around. “I’m sorry,” he said instead. “For scaring you, for not finding you.”

“Sorry for bolting,” she said, and moved to sit on the edge of the bed. He drew his feet closer to himself, sitting cross-legged. “Wash says I need to use my words.”

“And you left because…” Because she wanted too much to just beat him senseless?

“Because I needed to think of some,” she admitted, dropping her eyes so that her lashes cast shadows over her cut-glass cheekbones. People always thought she dyed her hair until they saw that her lashes were the same bright red. “It’s been a long time.”

 _1,941 days,_ Delta’s record-keeping told him. _Approximately 5.31 years._ “God. I know.” There were so many things he’d wanted to say to her, he had speeches and memories and confessions, but now that she was _here_ … His throat felt too thick for anything serious to come out and his head felt fuzzy. Honestly he felt kind of feverish. “How… are you?”

She flicked her eyes at him in that sideways way that always left him breathless. For a minute he wondered if that was a stupid question, or too big, or too obvious, and she looked like she was considering snapping at him… But she just laughed until she was breathless and he joined her, too relieved to do otherwise.

“ _How am I?”_ she asked. Carolina’s true delighted laugh was loud and shrieking, and it never, ever failed to make him happy to hear. “God, York…”

“I’m sorry,” he said, still chuckling. “Guess that was a dumb question.”

“Just a little,” she said, and with the smile on her face it was almost like it used to be. “Y’know, it figures.”

“What?”

“Years later, all the shit everyone went through… you still come out looking like _that_.”

Once he would have asked what _that_ meant with a teasing lilt to his voice, faintly daring her to stroke his ego. But now… after everything, he couldn’t bring himself to be that vain. Not aloud, anyway. “Wash said you killed the Director.”

 _A segue might have been helpful,_ Delta whispered. How low he’d sunk that _Delta_ was giving him courtesy lessons.

Her mouth twitched. “I didn’t. He killed himself.”

“Oh.” After everything the Director had done to Carolina and she didn’t even get the satisfaction of killing him herself. “Don’t you wish–”

“No,” she said, a touch sharply. “I moved past that.”

“Wh– after everything–”

“After everything I refuse to let him ruin my future. I survived his God-forsaken Project. I win. I don’t want to think about him anymore.”

And that wasn’t the Carolina he knew, who would pursue a grudge to the ends of the earth, who refused to let any slight go unanswered, who was as fiercely loving as she was, in general, fierce, and who wouldn’t allow the _injustice_ that was the Director getting to choose his own death. More than anything this emphasized the distance there was between them. She was two feet away and he’d never felt so far away; distance in space would be remedied by moving closer but he had no idea how to bridge such a gap in time. He’d spent about as much time away from Carolina as the whole time he’d known her. How about that.

“I guess I can’t put my bitterness out of mind,” he said finally. “God knows I’ve had nothing else to do for, what, just over five years?”

“Seven,” she said. “I haven’t seen you in seven years.”

But that didn’t make sense because Delta, Delta kept track because he couldn’t bear to, and five-point-three-one– “Five,” he repeated.

She looked at him askance, brows slightly furrowed. “ _Seven,_ ” she said more firmly. “I passed my thirty-fifth birthday a month ago.”

“Consider me your present this year. But you’re two years younger than me, and I’m–”

“About thirty-seven, I guess.” And that’s what Dr. Grey had said too but Delta– “Are you feeling alright, York? Your eyes are glassy…”

“Little cold,” he said faintly. _Run diagnostics,_ he ordered Delta and winced when it began, click-click-click like a rapid metronome behind his eyes. Normally Delta’s activities didn’t feel so… engrained with his. Maybe it was a big task.

“It’s not cold in here.” She reached out and brushed his forehead and her touch after so long was _electric._ “You’re feverish.”

“I’m fine. Dr. Grey said I’m healthy.”

“That was two days ago. York, you’re obviously–”

“I said I’m fine,” he said, and it was snappish and he didn’t want to be mean to Carolina but she was hitting him with a lot at once. And the Carolina h knew would snap back, because Carolina would bring a gun to a knife fight and a nuke to a gunfight, but she just paled and bit her lip and he wanted to take her hand but forced himself to clench his fists instead.

“I used to dream about you,” he said. “Every night, for years. Did you ever dream of me?”

“No,” she said, and he didn’t know what was worse– if she was lying or if that was the truth. “I’m not like the Director. I don’t live in the past. I am not like him.”

“I’m not the past,” he said quietly.

“No,” she agreed. “Not anymore.” She hesitated. “Have you gotten Delta looked at?”

“Carolina–”

“I had Epsilon,” she said, and it was very like her to drop that on him with no context or lead-in. “For a while. The way the fragments were harvested, it wasn’t very… well done. They deteriorate with age. I know how it feels to have that… going on.”

“Delta and I are both fine, thanks,” he said. There was no way to examine Delta without examining him too; they were interconnected, like a pregnancy or a parasite. If one hurts, the other hurts too. He knew she was trying to be helpful because Carolina had a huge heart but this was _private._ He’d rather explore the streets of Armonia buck-naked than open this artificial symbiosis up for examination and dissection.

“Alright,” she said, obviously not convinced. “But promise me that if you need my help, you’ll ask for it.”

 _You’re not my mother,_ he almost said, but that would be too cold even for his current state of mind. He wasn’t completely convinced that this was real but if Carolina was a hallucination, it was a very nice one, and he didn’t want to scare her away. “I should take a shower,” he said, because at least that was true.

“Alright. We’re all just… hanging out. You’re welcome to join us. You were always the social butterfly.”

Mm, that was true once upon a time, but his wings had long since been ripped off. Before he could even make an excuse, she reached out and cupped his cheek, her thumb brushing the too-prominent ridge of his cheekbone. Her eyes were very bright on his, the green of nuclear fallout. For a moment she swayed, like muscle memory was prompting her to lean in and kiss him, but then she dropped her hand and stood up with a weird look on her face, and it occurred to him–

“Are you happy to see me?” And fuck, it sounded absolutely pathetic aloud, but she was _Carolina_ and he had to know.

“I just watched someone rise from the dead,” she said. “How do you think that feels?” And she left, closing the door neatly behind her.

 _Diagnostics complete,_ said Delta.

“Great timing.”

_I did not want to interrupt your conversation._

“Very thoughtful of you, D. What’s the verdict?”

_All systems running at twenty-six percent capacity._

“Twenty-six,” he repeated, and dropped his head in his hands. “Something you’re not telling me, D?”

_I had not closely examined my own functionality in quite some time and it did not occur to me that I needed to. To use a more human analogy, an insane man cannot know that he is insane._

Delta could lie; Gamma, Sigma, and Omega all lied regularly and shamelessly, and when Theta discovered the ability, he spent an afternoon giggling and trying to convince a very patient North that the sky was green. So Delta most definitely had the ability, but he’d never displayed the inclination. “You’d tell me if something was wrong, right? Not just lie to make me feel better?”

_Is false comfort a human quality? You lie to spare pain?_

“All the time,” he said.

 _I would not lie to you, York._ But there were too many heartbeats between York’s statement and Delta’s and that tasted bitter.

“Okay, buddy,” he said softly, because if he had to maintain a positive relationship with someone, it might as well be himself.


	8. Out of Sync

Wash had left some clean clothes for York to change into, sweatpants that were a little too large and a shirt that was a little too tight, but they would definitely do. He combed his hair and decided against shaving; vain he might be, the stubble suited him, and it distracted from how pale and thin his face was. Well, at least it _had_ been pale. The hot shower– and Carolina was probably right about a fever– brought a healthy flush to his cheeks. “Figures,” he said to the reflection of the man he didn’t recognize. “That I looked so rough that getting sick makes me look _better._ ”

Delta appeared at his shoulder and it seemed like he flickered a little as he did, like static. Probably they were both a little sick. Theta used to like to try and interact with the world, sitting on North’s helmet or palm, playing with his little skateboard, but Delta never did anything but stand there. York’s rock was holographic. _“Appearances are not everything,”_ said Delta to the Freelancer who’d been more good-naturedly vain than any of the others. _“You should consider revisiting the hospital.”_

“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll definitely consider it.”

Everyone was indeed relaxing in the living room. Kai looked like she was napping and was holding… hands? With a tall Sangheili in armor the same color as Tucker’s. Wash was relaxing on the couch, bandages still around his throat, beard looking considerably better groomed than York’s ever had. Tucker sat to his left and looked up annoyed when York walked in. Carolina was on his right, watching Caboose sitting on the floor playing with a robot the height of his shin.

“Ah, Lazarus rises,” said Wash.

“It took Lazarus three days to rise,” said York.

“ _Then we are ahead of schedule,”_ said Delta, and that made Wash laugh.

“Breakfast on the counter if you’re hungry.”

If. York would probably be hungry for the rest of his life, so even though it was probably closer to dinner than to breakfast, he picked a strawberry donut out of the box and leaned against the wall to eat it quick. Carolina craned around to look at him.

“Oh,” she said. “I saved the double chocolate for you. Do you not like them anymore?”

Truth be told it had been so long since he’d had one that he didn’t know, but he also knew that with his fever, after so many years of eating small amounts of bland food, he probably couldn’t stomach so much chocolate without getting sick. But he didn’t want to admit that aloud so he just said “no” and saw her face fall a little, and he hated that. They’d grown apart. He had no idea how to get back to her.

“So, uh,” he said, the familiar green of Delta in his periphery comforting him, “can, uh, someone tell me about Church?”

Caboose’s head snapped up at the mention of the name, as bright and sudden as if someone had called _him._ Tucker grimaced, and Wash and Carolina looked down together. Once upon a time he and Carolina could mirror each other like it was nothing.

The first thing he learned about firearms was that you don’t shoot where a moving target _is_ but where it’s _going_ to be, and as a team, every move he made with Carolina fit that basic tenet. They always knew how to account for each other, how to compensate, how and when and where to shoot as if their bullets were in love as much as they were.

So while it was nice to know that she hadn’t been alone the way he’d been alone, that Wash still had someone who understood, there was the distinct feeling that Wash had taken his place as Carolina’s second-in-command and York was just out of sync with the whole world.

“It’s a long story,” said Wash a bit hesitantly. “And a sad one. But I’ll condense it as much as I can.”

Tucker’s mouth twitched. “That’s his legacy, huh? To be a highlights reel for someone who didn’t have to stay dead?”

 _Private Tucker does not like you,_ Delta murmured to him, like that wasn’t clear. The question was _why_ , or at least it was until he and Delta together caught the lowered-lashes look Tucker shot at Wash.

“It’s that or we’re here for fifteen years,” said Wash. “York… Church was the Alpha.”

 _Alpha Alpha ALPHA ALPHA **ALPHA,**_ Delta was shouting in his ear almost, or not so much _at_ him but _around_ him and he had to slam his hands against his temples, eyes shut and teeth gritted, to make it stop. _No! Allison!_

“Please don’t say the word,” York hissed, heart pounding. The word _Allison_ didn’t hurt anymore– he had long since associated it with someone else, and counted himself probably the only person who knew all three of her names– but creator, father, that was too much.

“Sorry– sorry.” Wash and Carolina had shared Epsilon. Did it hurt like this for them? “That’s what he was, though. Didn’t know it, didn’t act like it, but he was, and he was… destroyed when the Meta was.”

“He died,” said Tucker sharply. “You can say that.”

“Died, then,” said Wash. York cracked his eyes open, the one that worked and the one that didn’t, and dropped his hands to his side. He would not break down in front of all of them. He wouldn’t. “And then Epsilon took on his… personality, I suppose. We lost Epsilon a few months ago.”

“Lost.” Another little pang from Delta, another brother lost. Delta hadn’t had affection for any of the other fragments the way he did for Theta, but, York supposed, that didn’t make the loss easier to bear. After all, he’d told Wash he’d weep at the feet of Nebraska or Hawaii after all this time. Losing something you never had… “Tell me about _lost.”_

“Defragmentation,” said Carolina, the syllables light on her tongue. Carolina spoke like words didn’t sink into her gums and down her throat, the way they did for him. “A fragment trying to do the work of a full AI… they can’t handle it. It’s too much stress, and they shatter.”

“Don’t,” he breathed, but knew she wouldn’t hear him.

“Nine lives,” Wash said. “Or– how did Grif put it? _Resurrected more times than Jean Grey.”_

“Dead for good now,” said Tucker.

Caboose patted the robot on the head. “If York can come back from the dead–”

“I wasn’t dead,” York said quickly. After years of the whole galaxy being cold and hard, Caboose had a sweet open face and he felt a brotherly urge to protect him. “It’s not the same.”

His brow furrowed. “Washington said–”

“It’s a metaphor, Caboose,” said Tucker, probably a little sharper than he meant to. “They only thought York was dead. We know Church is gone. You said goodbye.”

“I hate goodbyes,” he said, and York had to agree with that one. Carolina frowned, like the phrase was a song lyric half-remembered. “Mister York?”

His brows shot up and Delta almost laughed, a rough mechanical grind. It was weird enough when the lower-tier Freelancers or grunts back on the _MoI_ called him ‘sir’. This was a new level of strange. “Just York is fine.”

“Just York,” he said, and Carolina smiled at that one. “Would you like to meet Freckles?” He gestured to the little robot and York didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do with it, but it was an olive branch from someone who had no reason to think well of him. After all, Church had stayed dead and York got to come back. What did that say about him?

“I’d love to,” he said, and he went to go sit on the floor at Carolina’s feet, at just that right distance that if she wanted to, she could reach out and play with his hair.


	9. A High Demand on Hope

After two full days of sleep, York couldn’t sink back into it easily that night, and he didn’t try. He gave Wash his bed back and sat on the couch with a cup of decaf going cold beside him, shivering and alone. Delta pulsed softly, and strictly speaking there was no need for him to take his holographic form at all; everyone else had long since gone to bed and Delta could speak to him perfectly well inside his head.

But there was an understanding between them after so long and York liked to see the physical proof of him, to know that he wasn’t just talking to himself, to feel like there was a distinct and separate person beside him. It brought him comfort he had no other source of.

“Delta?” he asked aloud after some unknown span of time.

“ _Yes, York?”_

“Do you ever think about death? Or… dying?”

_“Is there a difference?”_

“Death is a state of being,” he said. “Dying is a… process.”

Delta went quiet for a while. When they met, Delta’s answers were instantaneous, like he had all his information and opinions perfectly formed and sorted. Probably he still did, but he at least gave the appearance of considering how he was going to answer, and York found it comforting, more like they were two people conversing. Maybe he knew that. Maybe that’s why he did it.

“ _Yes,_ ” he said finally. _“I think about dying.”_

York didn’t ask whether he meant his own death, York’s death, or death in the abstract; he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “Just dying? Not death?”

_“You called it a state of being. It is specifically a state of nothingness. There is no point in dwelling over nothingness.”_

That was a point York could argue, because there were different types of nothingness: absence and presence. The presence of nothingness was in a sense _something,_ a deliberate emptiness, as opposed to what is left when something is taken away. But North used to call him _insufferably philosophical_ in a way that Delta, who was logic after all, could never really relate to, and besides, it was too late at night and he didn’t feel well enough for an argument about semantics. It’s shockingly difficult to win an argument against something in your head.

“I think nothingness is debatable,” he said instead, like that wasn’t still arguing semantics. “No one knows what happens after death. Heaven, reincarnation, something else I can’t even begin to comprehend.” He did not know what he believed, which was what left him sleepless on nights like these. He did know that if Heaven and Hell existed, he was a lot likelier to end up in the latter, should actions outweigh intentions in the grand cosmic karma. “Kinda like before birth. Y’know?”

Another pause from Delta. _“There was nothingness before I was born,”_ he said. _“I was created. I have met my creator. I know precisely where I came from and why.”_

How underwhelming it might have been, if he cared about that. York couldn’t stomach the thought of meeting a possible creator at all, let alone to be told that he was created solely to see if he could be, born out of tragedy and torture and twisted obsession to be a tool and experiment. It was better to not know and have hope.

“I guess you’re right. But who knows? Maybe you do have a soul and you’ll go where I go.”

He meant it lighthearted, but the aura he got from Delta was not very relaxed. _“The existence of a soul is hotly debated. You are speaking of sentience. By definition I cannot determine if I am sentient or if I am merely the result of intensive programming.”_

What a cheery thought. “Well, either way, it’s nice that you can talk and argue with me, huh? Gotta be worth something.” He could practically feel the _if you say so_ from Delta, even if the words themselves never came. At what point did Delta’s manners become better than his?

 _“If I am more than computer,”_ said Delta, _“it is because of you.”_

What could he even say to that? If he were in Delta’s place, he would much rather meet himself than the Director. He would rather meet someone who molded his spirit and heart and personality instead of his mere existence, and he would rather speak to someone who, when asked, would say they loved and cared about him, instead of one who used him. “Thanks, D,” he said, instead of anything so saccharine. Delta knew how he felt about him, and even if he didn’t, it felt too big and too sad to say aloud now.

_“If I may ask a question in return…”_

“Always. Anything.”

_“Did you have a family before?”_

Well. Well, well. Of all the questions he expected Delta to ask. “Yes,” he said, because what was the point otherwise? He would deflect from Carolina and ignore Wash but Delta– Delta wasn’t going to hurt or pity him with that information. “I don’t know where they are now. I don’t know how they’re doing, or if they know anything about what happened to me. I don’t know if they think I’m a traitor who defected or if they know I’m even alive.”

A beat of silence. _“Do you think it is better to know about tragedy or to be forever uncertain?”_

“Depends on how high a demand you put on hope, D. Schrödinger’s box, y’know? Every possibility exists simultaneously until there’s proof. I can imagine my family happy and together so long as I don’t know otherwise.”

_“Schrödinger was using the box metaphor to make a point about the ridiculousness of that theorem.”_

“Then my point still stands, just without Schrödinger’s involvement.” It only just occurred to him why Delta was wondering about hope. “Are you still thinking about Epsilon?”

_“All of them. Every one of the fragments I know about is gone, to the best of my knowledge.”_

“Do you… miss them? Even Sigma, even Omega?”

 _“There is no value in grief like that,_ ” he said, even though York knew perfectly well that he’d been grieving Theta. _“But they were a part of me, once. We made up the same whole. They were, in that sense, my brothers. There were two left unassigned who remain in storage, as my records indicate.”_

That piqued York’s interest, even though he wished it didn’t. They were desperate for AI at the end, why would they leave any assigned? Were they harvested after Epsilon but couldn’t be implanted before the process was suspended? “Did they have names?”

_“Designations Lambda and Omicron.”_

Nope, none York had ever heard of. In the files Tex had shared with him, there were mentions of fragments for _love_ and _greed,_ maybe those were–

No. Nope. He was not going to dwell on that. Like Carolina said, move past it. “Sorry to hear it,” he said instead, and meant it. “Sorry you had to lose your family.”

_“I am glad that we have fallen in with Agents Washington and Carolina and their simulation troopers.”_

“Me too, buddy.”

_“They knew Alpha. They knew Epsilon. In a sense, they are the last people in the universe who knew my family.”_

Oh. That was… well, York knew what he meant about the understanding. He felt just the same about North, about South, about Tex, even team members like Wyoming that he didn’t like. If there was someone else besides him to remember them, then he hadn’t truly lost them. And that was an okay type of memory, right? Not the kind that topples cities?

“York?”

His head snapped up and he saw Carolina in her workout clothes. “Oh. Hi, Carolina.”

“You’re up early.”

“Didn’t go to bed. What time is it?”

“Close to five,” she said, half-frowning. “Are you feeling alright?”

No, but she already knew that. “I slept for two days straight. I’ll get back on schedule soon enough. My circadian rhythm works out its kinks as quick as I did in college.”

It took her a second, but she smiled when she worked it out. “Just as awful as ever.”

“My jokes?”

“You,” she said, and he smiled back. “What are you doing up?”

“Ah, y’know. Sittin’ in the dark with Delta, talking about death.”

“That’s… a little worrying.” And she looked a little worried, and that kinda bummed him out because he was sick of worrying all his friends, if only because he didn’t like being the center of attention. He wanted to know what Carolina was like now, what she did and thought and liked, not who she was when she was worried about him. He wanted to know her the way Wash did. “Do you… do this a lot?”

“Sit in the dark, yes. Talk to Delta, yes. Think about death, yes.”

Her eyes flashed like a cat’s did in the dark. “York…”

“I’m alright,” he said, because she needed to hear it. “You can go work out, I’ll still be breathing when you come back.” Ah, that toed the line of appropriate jokes to make given his current state.

“You could come with me.”

They used to love to train together. She pushed him to his limits and he was the only one who gave her a challenge, and they worked so beautifully together it was almost a dance. But that had been before, and he hadn’t gone to seed or anything but the thought of a punishing Freelancer workout, of screaming muscles and aching bones, made his stomach roil.

“Not today,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow.” _Maybe never._

And he didn’t say the last part but she looked like she understood what he meant anyway, and she left the way she promised she did everything now: without looking back.


	10. Melancholia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was supposed to be smut in this chapter but I couldn't get it to fit the tone so instead you get whatever the hell this is. Enjoy!

Wash would only let York wallow in feverish misery for two days before he dragged him right back to Dr. Grey. “I feel like she’s gonna dissect me,” he protested, but Wash didn’t care.

“If nothing else, I don’t want to catch whatever the hell you have,” said Wash. “You’ve spent seven years in the gutter. You’re a human smallpox blanket.”

“Who does not have chlamydia,” he said, trailing unhappily after Wash into the hospital.

“I don’t understand why you keep telling me that. Is that a come-on? Is the best thing you can say about yourself sexually is that you aren’t diseased?”

York flushed, although he couldn’t have said why. “That’s all I was tested for, as far as I know! She didn’t tell me I didn’t have, y’know, Legionnaire’s disease or whatever, she said I didn’t have any STIs.”

“Well, alright. I was worried your lines had gotten _worse_ in the past couple years. Didn’t know how that was possible.”

“Is this a check-up or a roast?”

Wash shrugged but didn’t answer and somehow that was more insulting. “I’ll check you in. Go sit down, you look like you’re about to pass out.”

He took a seat in the waiting room and reached out for Delta. The past few days had left him acutely aware of Delta’s presence in a way he hadn’t been since he was first implanted, almost self-conscious. At first it had felt necessary– _are you still there?–_ but he’d long since stopped justifying it. He needed the comfort of that little spark, where he reached out mentally and Delta reached back. _Here I am._

Wash did not accompany him into the exam room and as before he stripped down and offered up blood or whatever else was necessary for Dr. Grey to run whatever tests she wanted. He even let her poke around his port for a bit, at Delta’s suggestion and encouragement.

“Good news!” she said after a while. As before, her voice jolted him like a static shock. York had never met a more unsettling presence, and that included… no, alright, Sigma was probably weirder. “I have no idea what’s wrong with you!”

“Great,” he said. “Why’s that good news?”

“Well, everything I was testing for is pretty nasty! Sure would be interesting, though!” She laughed, and he shivered. “Have you heard of mirror syndrome?”

“No…”

“It’s a very rare condition found in pregnant women.”

“Boy, then this is gonna be some news for me.”

“Basically, a fetus gets sick enough to make the mother sick too. Take the fetus out, problem solved.”

“I think it’s too late for me to be aborted,” he said.

“Your AI,” she said, and he shrunk back instinctively. “Degenerating AI is no good for brain tissue, especially the more integrated you are.”

“So I’m fine,” he said bluntly.

“Physically, absolutely! I got some data on your port, this isn’t my specialty but I have a few contacts who’d love to take a look at it. Confidential, of course. Give ‘em a few days and I’ll send you their prognosis!”

“Sounds great,” he said, and reached for his pants. “Can I leave?”

“Absolutely! Feel better!”

That was not the advice he wanted to get from a doctor, but if she couldn’t help him, he wanted to duck out. He got dressed quick as he could and went back out to Wash, except Wash wasn’t there, Tucker was. “Where’s… Wash?”

“They wanted to take another look at his throat to see if they can take the bandage off. He said he didn’t know how long it would be and told me to take you home if you didn’t want to stick around.”

He’d feel bad abandoning Wash but he was still not feeling great on either a physical or metaphysical plane and he wanted to go sit down on the couch and watch Caboose make friends with Delta. “I think I know the way back.”

“Nope,” he said, and York wasn’t even sure how to argue with that. “Wash told me to take you back, I’m taking you back.”

“Good little soldier,” said York, and it came out a little sharp but he was still shaken and honestly he’d always been charismatic and wasn’t used to people so bluntly and obviously disliking him.

“I don’t take orders,” Tucker snapped, striding away. York’s legs were longer but he struggled to keep up. “Wash is my friend.”

“Seems like you want him to be more than that.”

For a moment it looked like Tucker was going to yell at him or something but he just scowled. “It’s so fucking _stupid,_ Church would’ve had a fucking field day with all of this. Me looking at Wash, who’s looking at Carolina, who’s looking at _you_.”

“Why do you hate me? I didn’t choose to make it out alive and I never slept with Wash.” One of those was probably the sticking point, right?

“It’s just not _fair._ Church gave up everything for us more than once and we couldn’t save him. You fucked around doing whatever for years and just got lucky.” _I’d rather be lucky than good._ “And I get it, he’s gone, I got closure, whatever. But if someone had to come back from the dead, I don’t get why it was _you_.”

“Me neither,” he admitted. They left the hospital and headed towards the train. “I don’t… understand any of it. Never chose it like this, wouldn’t have ever chosen it like this. I’m sorry your friend is dead. I’m sorry if me showing up disrupted the life you built here. I’m sorry you’re in love with someone who might not love you back.” Tucker’s mouth twitched and York could feel the struck nerve as acutely as if it was his own. “Just… sorry, Tucker.”

Ooh. It felt weird to say his name aloud, almost intimate, but Tucker’s annoyance plainly crumbled away and even if he didn’t look _happy_ , he at least didn’t look murderous anymore. Which, given this point in York’s life, was all he could hope for anyway.

  


***

 

Wash was cleared to get his bandage off and even if Tucker and Carolina both kind of grimaced every time they caught a look at the puckered pink scar, it was worth seeing him relaxed to be completely in the clear. To think that stupid little scar was what brought York home to them in the first place.

But some part of Tucker’s complaint stuck with him so York drew Wash onto the balcony after dinner so they could sit and look out at the city. It was a breathtaking view and York appreciated the quiet and privacy. “I was talking to Tucker earlier,” he started, and Wash smiled.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“He said you’re in love with Carolina.”

That stopped Wash dead. He didn’t blush– he was a long way from the awkward, nervous rookie with a permanent pink flush– but he bit his lip and looked out at the horizon thoughtfully. “I can’t… oversell the significance of someone who _gets it,_ ” he said finally. “You have to understand, it wasn’t ever… we didn’t… I was so alone,” he said as if York wouldn’t sympathize. “I couldn’t believe that anyone who knew me before would want to know me still. What Tucker said a couple days ago about loving someone for who they were instead of what they became? I needed someone who could care about me for what I was _and_ what I became and there wasn’t… anyone else… left.”

“I’m not mad,” said York softly, and he drew his knees up by his chest. “I had– have– Delta. Same principle.” God, that sounded a little like admitting he was in love with Delta, which was… strange, to say the least, and a can of worms he was not going to open. “I was only… wondering.”

“You wanted to know if I replaced you,” he said, and York _did_ blush.

“Guess I did.”

“I didn’t. Not in her heart, not at her side, not in her bed,” and York could not make eye contact, “not… any of it. We’re friends, we’re partners, we’re kind of family… nothing more.”

“I know she doesn’t want to think about the past…”

“But she does. Doesn’t want to but can’t help it. She told me…” He huffed out a breath. “She’s got your lighter. Did you know?” He hadn’t known. He didn’t think anyone had it, he thought it was just back on that godforsaken island that he couldn’t bring himself to return to. Maybe if he’d considered that anyone had it, he might think Tex did. But Tex never lent herself to sentimentality the way his romantic fool ass did, and anyway Tex was gone now too. “She told me…”

York waited for Wash to continue, but he kept on hesitating. “What did she tell you?” he asked eventually.

“She said… she thought you were her chance at a fresh start, and she threw it all away.”

They both let that sit out there for a while and for no reason at all York thought about dying again.

 _Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Melancholia, anger, jealousy, metastability._ The words ran through his head the way his own thoughts would, but they felt like Delta. _Why does dying for you feel different than for me? Why are the stages different?_

 _Rampancy isn’t death,_ York thought back at him. _Rampancy is rebirth._

_I don’t feel very much alive._

_You don’t feel,_ York thought. _We aren’t dying. Don’t interrupt._ It was rare that Delta let his musings crash wholeheartedly into York’s, especially in the middle of a conversation.

“I don’t think I would make a very good fresh start,” he said aloud, feeling a slight emotional vertigo from Delta’s talk of death to Wash’s talk of life. “At this point I’m not a very good anything.”

“You don’t have to be,” said Wash, and York thought he probably meant it in a _you don’t have to justify your continued existence_ sort of way but it came out a little more like _you matter more to her without even trying._ Once having someone tell him that Carolina cared about him would have been thrilling. Now it felt… slightly exhausting and more than a little confusing.

“Y’know,” he continued. “If this were a movie, I’d say, wow, maybe I really was in love with Tucker the whole time, and I could go confess that to him so that there wouldn’t be anything between you and Carolina.”

“Only a shitty movie,” said York. “Don’t… don’t worry about it, man. Everything just kinda… is, y’know? You aren’t obligated to feel…”

“I know,” he said, and got up. “I’m gonna go do the dishes before Caboose tries to help doing them. If you want I can send Carolina out.”

“Good luck _sending_ Carolina anywhere,” he said, and Wash smiled. “But if she– if she wants to see me…”

Wash clapped him on the shoulder and went back in and York very distinctly craved a cigarette. He hadn’t smoked in years, barely even smoked when he was playing with that stupid lighter in the first place, and he couldn’t have said what exactly he was craving about it… but he did want one. Or a stiff drink.

"Nice view, huh?" said Carolina, and York whipped around to watch her step outside and slide the door shut behind her. "Planning on buying a place here? Or are you out now that you know Wash is alright?"

"Actually I was planning on dying here."

She grimaced a little and he could've kicked himself. Gallows humor hadn't appealed to her in the Project, when their deaths were all still hypothetical. It would certainly not appeal to her now that all the friends that used to laugh at those stupid jokes were dead and buried. “You look miserable,” said Carolina instead of telling him off. “Wash said you were lonely.”

“Wash has a big mouth.”

“Just playing to his strengths. He’s a lot better at keeping the guys in there in line than he is at making anyone feel better, so here I am. And here you are, playing to yours.”

What did that mean? It had been a very long time since York felt like he was in his element. “What’s my strength, then?”

“Sitting here, looking pretty.” She sat beside him and she was smiling but he couldn’t quite keep the hurt out of his voice when he spoke.

“Is that… really what you think of me?”

She flicked her eyes at him. “Do you think that’s all I think of you?”

“I don’t know what I think at this point. It’s been… it’s been a hard time, Carolina.” It all rose up in him too strong, he wanted to be sick and he wanted to scream about nothing at all but the part of him that Tex had re-awoken when she called him _York_ was loud and fierce and was not big enough to contain too many years of bitter solitude. “I’m going to bed. Are you coming?”

Classless. It was completely classless, he’d never had less game in all his life, but maybe being direct for once instead of dancing around it with euphemism and innuendo was worth it because Carolina nodded and led him to her room. They didn’t pass Tucker or Caboose; Tucker’s bedroom door was closed and the sounds of people losing a video game spilled out. Wash was at the sink but he didn’t look up when they passed.

Carolina’s room here was just like he expected: bare of personal items and neat to an unreasonable degree, and it should’ve felt barren and lonely but it felt so distinctly Carolina that it was nothing at all for him to lean in and kiss her like he never thought he’d get to kiss her again. Her hands came up to cup his fever-hot cheeks and he tripped a little trying to kick off Wash’s sweatpants, and it was nothing like the beautifully choreographed encounters they’d had before but he was fucking thirty-seven all of a sudden and Carolina had grey hairs and if things had been normal he could’ve been crawling into bed beside a beloved wife instead of fumbling with a woman he was no longer sure he knew.

But even a facsimile of affection was better than another long and lonely night and Delta’s reminders about human touch echoed between his ears and Carolina did him a kindness and let him take control, and he was on top of her and her lips were at his throat but he wasn’t– he couldn’t– _please don’t let her notice–_

She noticed. Of course she noticed, and she glanced down with that too-familiar worried expression. “Everything… okay?”

Out of habit York reached inward for Delta’s advice but there was probably no subject Delta was less qualified to answer for than this one. “I’m fine,” he said, and didn’t even know if that was a lie. “It works fine when it’s just me.”

“Is it… me?”

“No. God, no. It’s– I don’t know why– I swear this never happens,” he said desperately. _I bet you say that to all the ladies._ “You– you’re beautiful, it’s not–”

“Relax,” she said, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t even do _this_ right so he just collapsed beside her with an irritated sigh.

“What a fucking waste. Thanks, Dr. Grey, I don’t have syphilis! And it doesn’t fucking matter because my dick doesn’t work!”

“I’m sure it _works_.” She hesitated. “What was it like the last time you were with someone?”

“You tell me, it was you.”

“That– that was years ago…”

“Yep,” he said. He wanted to ask if it had been that long for her too, if he was the last one she knew, if Wash was lying when he said they’d never slept together, if it mattered. “God, Carolina… I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For just… me,” he said, and then nothing else.


	11. I Would Prefer...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it's been a ride! Sorry to anyone who thought this wouldn't end angsty as hell. Thanks for reading!

York didn’t make a move on Carolina again, couldn’t quite bring himself to touch her knowing that he probably couldn’t follow through on any of it. Probably that exact fear was why it wasn’t working, but he’d see how easy it was for Wash to sit beside her and shove her shoulder and brush something off her cheek, and he tried so hard to be thankful that at least she could get affection from someone, even if it couldn’t be him.

Late at night when he was sprawled out on the couch not sleeping Delta would hit him with little flashes of sensation; the way Carolina’s hair felt against his fingertips, the slow steady beat of her heart when he held her chest-to-chest. Carolina had always been someone who would break instead of bend but she would bow over him like a willow when she woke him up early by straddling his thighs.

A month ago that would have made him furious. A month ago he would have felt sick to remember all those phantom touches. But now, now with Carolina right in front of him and he was too sick or scared or weak to do anything about it, Delta’s little comforts did actually make him feel better. How pathetic.

In theory this was supposed to be rebirth; he was rescued from dismal obscurity and brought home to the only people in the universe who knew and loved him. In theory he should relax, eat better, get some clothes that fit instead of wearing Wash’s… He couldn’t say why he didn’t. Wash assured him that any kind of recovery takes time but there was a tightness in his chest that didn’t dissipate until those three a.m.’s where the world was dead except for him and Delta. He could only stand his own reflection when it was lit up green.

But he tried. He tried to hide it, because these people had lost too much already to be saddled with his miserable ass, so he played with Freckles and let Donut take him to breakfast, and Tucker’s son taught him how to swear in Sangheili. Wash did not think that was as funny as Carolina did; Tucker made fun of his pronunciation, but there was no real anger in it.

Of course, even that most paper-thin sort of happiness wasn’t going to last forever.

Wash woke him up early nearly a week after he failed to impress Carolina. Before, York had been a lazy riser, a five-more-minutes sleepy-eyed sort of person, but now he jolted at Wash’s hand on his shoulder, eyes flying open. “Wh–”

“Relax,” said Wash in the sort of tone that said he understood. “I– Dr. Grey sent the results of the… whatever test she did on Delta? I didn’t open it, but it’s…”

York took the datapad and sat up, pulling his legs under him like a pretzel. He didn’t read it aloud, tried not to let his face contort, but it said _degradation_ and it said _irreparable_ and it said _must be removed soon or it will shortly be impossible to do without harm._ What it said was that Delta was dying, and that if York didn’t rip him out, it was probably going to kill him too.

He read the message once more and then deleted it, handed the pad back to Wash, and said nothing. Finally Wash broke the silence. “Are you going to tell me what it said?”

“Not right now,” said York. He thumbed a scar over his wrist and his vision was unfocused. “I need shore leave.”

“We’re retired. It’s just called vacation now.”

York shook his head. He just woke up, how was he so tired? “It’s… shore leave was always like Christmas morning, y’know? Felt special, felt important. Felt like there was a very real possibility that this was as good as it was ever gonna get and that we should appreciate it while we still could. And I– I want–” He hung his head, tried to breathe. “I want one more day,” he said softly. “One more day where everyone is happy. I can’t– I can’t ever have that with North and South and Maine again. I want to rebuild from the ashes except it feels like I’m still on fire–”

“Alright,” said Wash, and it was amazing how the one word changed everything. “I’ll set it up. Today’s shore leave, York. Put on a pair of jeans and grab your camera. Go wake up Carolina.”

At least that was sort of like it used to be. Shore leave was the only thing that could drag York out of bed before everyone else and he’d always been in charge of slamming doors open and risking a beat-down to tell everyone to get the hell up and start moving already.

So he told Delta to rest and kicked Carolina’s door in.

She woke up all at once because that’s how Carolina did everything so she bolted upright and stared him down and for half a moment it was like it was when he had two good eyes and more than two good friends. “Shore leave,” he said, and she threw a pillow at him.

“It’s not even four,” she complained. “Shore leave? That’s every day now.”

“Not like this it’s not. C’mon. Up and at ‘em, we’re going out to raise a little hell.”

He got another pillow thrown his direction but when he ducked he heard her agree. Probably she felt sorry for him or was just happy to see him even pretending to be normal, but at this point he would take what he could get.

 ***

It took Wash two hours to wrangle all the Reds and Blues into a mostly-awake and mostly-annoyed party on a train out of the city. “If we’re heading back to the crash site–” Grif started, but Wash shook his head.

“Not that far away, though.”

“Did Kimball ever finish mapping all the temples?” asked Tucker. “I kinda don’t feel like setting any more off today.”

“There is no way Santa would let you anywhere near another temple,” said Carolina, and York gave up on following the conversation at all.

They got off still within view of the city’s skyline and a few minutes’ walk put them at a lake with a half a dozen little streams feeding into it. “Great!” said Donut. “I’m going skinny dipping!” He started running towards the lake.

“No the fuck you’re not!” yelled Tucker, who chased him.

“I also want to run!” said Caboose, who followed.

“This is fucking ridiculous,” Grif muttered to Simmons, who agreed.

They all set up at the lakeside. Simmons kept his shirt on and sat beside Grif, who gave him an Oreo. Junior picked up Kai bodily and tossed her in. Donut did indeed lose his swimming trunks and Sarge, playing impromptu lifeguard, shouted at him. York sat back with Wash and Carolina just watching the chaos unfold.

Wash didn’t build a sandcastle because South wasn’t there to destroy it, and Carolina didn’t offer to play chicken because there was no Maine for her to perch on the shoulders of. York didn’t touch the sunscreen because there was no North for him to draw a dick on the back of. But even so, it felt alright. It was nice to sit in the sunshine, at least.

“Delta’s dying,” he said after about an hour of relative quiet. It was not a very good way to start a conversation but the art of the segue was lost on him long ago and anyway, if he didn’t say it bluntly he wasn’t sure he was ever going to say it.

Carolina took his hand but she didn’t look surprised. “He lasted a lot longer than anyone would have expected,” she said. “Epsilon was in storage first, out of commission for a while… When was the last time you even pulled Delta?”

“Five years at least.” He knew it wasn’t long after he defected. He’d thought that was five years, but it must’ve been closer to seven. “Dr. Grey estimates he might have a year left.”

The anxiety that Delta had been projecting since he first ran diagnostics loosened its grip on his heart somewhat. It was the uncertainty that bothered him; knowing was better than not knowing. “I’m sorry,” said Wash. “I know he’s been… I’m sorry you’ll lose that.”

“I’m not going to pull him.”

A beat while they processed it and then Carolina spoke with an edge to her voice. “What do you mean? Epsilon nearly killed Wash and that was only an attempt, that wasn’t the fragment’s complete _death,_ and he’d only been implanted a short time. York, you and Delta have been inseparable–”

“I know. We’re too closely linked for me to get rid of him now.” Truthfully he thought that was even medically sound; when a bullet is too deeply embedded in tissue, it’s safer just to leave it be than risk tearing everything to pieces getting it out. “And I can’t… abandon him.”

“ _York.”_

“I almost died,” he said. “Years ago. With Tex. Wyoming shot me in the chest, shattered my sternum. Tex thought I was a goner, offered to take Delta so he wouldn’t be destroyed when my suit self-destructed. Y’know what he said?”

“York–”

“He said no. He said, _I would prefer to stay with York._ He was gonna die for me. Now I can’t die for him?”

“You can’t die,” said Wash, rubbing his forehead. “You just… we just got you back. Now you’re telling us you’re committing suicide!”

“No, it’s not…” _Isn’t it?_ Delta asked. “It might not kill me. It might not hurt me. But it’s not like… I can’t implant him anywhere else. He can’t be put into anyone else, or a suit of armor. If I pull him, he’s gone for good. I’m not going to be responsible for that. Delta’s the only reason I’m still alive.” He said that very firmly. Carolina had saved his life a dozen times over but Delta _was_ his left side. He might’ve blown his brains out years ago if not for Delta. “Wash, can I have a minute alone with Carolina?”

“York–”

“It’s fine, Wash,” she said, and they watched him walk towards the lakeside with his hands stuffed in his pockets.

“Carolina… I just want to say–”

“No.”

“Just let me–”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“You won’t let me say it?” he said, hurt. He’d imagined a billion times what things might be like if he was honest about his feelings. Now especially he wanted to take the chance he’d wasted before.

“I won’t let you say it because you think you’ll never get to say it again,” she said, and drew her knees toward her chest. “You’re not going to leave me again. You’re going to stay, and you’re going to enjoy retirement with me, and if in fifteen years you want to say it again, you can. But I’m not losing you now. Not after I just got you back.”

“I love you,” he said quickly, before she could cut him off again. She bit her lip and her brows drew together. “And I’ll be happy to tell you again in fifteen years but in case I don’t…”

“I don’t understand,” she said softly. “I don’t know why you’d do this.”

If she didn’t understand, he didn’t know how to explain it to her. Delta was no longer separate from his own consciousness; pulling Delta was more like ripping out his brainstem than like taking off armor. It was different before, they were all different before, and he couldn’t save South or Theta but he could save Delta. “I know,” he said, because he did. “But I would prefer to stay with Delta.”

Carolina didn’t cry; he’d never seen her cry. But her eyes were shining as she stared out at the sim troopers. Every one of them had survived almost certain death, they’d been shot and blown up and named intergalactic traitors and here they were splashing Wash on the shore and screaming incoherently at each other. They weren’t too different in age from York– Sarge even was older– but looking at them he couldn’t help but think of a next generation, ready to learn from the mistakes he’d made, ready to survive the chaos he helped build.

He was thirty-seven. In a normal life, in a normal world, he could have children of his own to be the genuine next generation. Maybe he still might. But then, he could barely handle the possibility of settling down with Carolina. None of that was in the cards for him. _You would be a good father,_ said Delta, and York sighed to himself. _You would be a good husband. You are a good friend._

_I’m sorry I couldn’t help you, D,_ he said inward.

_Thank you for staying,_ said Delta. _Thank you for protecting me. Thank you for a decade of good company._

“You’re welcome,” he said aloud, and reached out for Carolina’s hand, and after a moment she took it.

**Author's Note:**

> Please consider leaving a comment with any thoughts!


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